Thursday dinner: Roast chicken breasts with garbanzo beans

Not all paprika is created equal.

For most of my life, I thought paprika was the orange stuff that some people would put on macaroni salad. It really wasn’t until the last few years, when I really got into exploring and trying new stuff in the kitchen, that I learned the difference. It’s really a product of my upbringing. We never ate the stuff. Frankly, if it wasn’t parsley, basil or oregano, it rarely made it into one of my mother’s recipes. That said, it’s the fourth-most consumed spice in the world.

This particular recipe calls for smoked paprika. Most Spanish paprikas are smoked, though they can range in flavor from sweet to hot depending on the pepper used. Spanish paprikas are typical milder, a direct correlation to the pepper grown. The peppers used in Hungarian paprika are bolder and sun-dried. This process maintains the pepper’s natural flavors, which can range from bittersweet to hot. The most widely found variety, found in the plastic McCormick bottles with “Paprika” splashed across the front, is good mainly for garnish and color. It possess little to no flavor.